Short-Season Podcast: Is It Worth Your Time And Effort?

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Hey everybody. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host, and today I want to share with you some thoughts on seasons of your podcast in particular. Really a question that was posed to us. Are single, short season shows worth it? I mean, should you even consider putting out your shows as a season and especially as a new podcaster, is it worth launching a podcast where you're just going to put out a single short season and that's all you're intending to do right now? And you know, I have some pretty strong feelings about that. Especially when you think of a season you talk about, it might bring to mind that you would drop a season all at once. That's what a lot of us experience with shows on Netflix and HBO and all these different TV apps. Do all you feel as bombarded by all these different apps as I do? It's like, oh my gosh, now I need to sign up for another one because some new series, I mean, Outlander, just started this past week and you got to get stars if you want to see that, right?

So most of us podcasters, especially just starting out, don't have the kind of visibility and brand awareness of an app on your Amazon Fire TV or your app on, you know, whatever different streaming service you might use, or certainly just in general in the awareness of potential listeners and viewers. So, you know, when HBO puts out something new, gets a lot of attention. When Netflix puts something out, pretty much everybody sees it. So when we're an independent podcaster and you know we're coming out with a new show, dropping, let's say, a dozen episodes as a single season for the first time may not, in my opinion, be what's going to serve you the best. You know, usually when an independent podcaster putting out content wants to build an audience and that audience, you know, you want to grow over time. Well, if all you've got is one set of content as a limited set of episodes and you drop it all at once, you know, it'll get some visibility. Putting it on all the apps, it's going to get a certain amount of organic play but it's kind of a one and done scenario. I mean, unless you're, you know, promoting it on social media, raising awareness for it, which of course you should be, it's really got limited staying power and is only going to get so much traction. We tend to experience with independent podcasters that aside from whatever amount you launch with, and there are different launch strategies of launching with three episodes on day one, six episodes, 10, 12, or as much as 25, we've seen people do all at once can work very well. But when it's followed up by episodes that continue to publish on a regular cadence on a regular basis, whether that's one a week, two a week, three a week, I mean, there's no upper limit as to what you can do. And we even experience people doing every other week. Although in our experience, we find at minimum, publishing a weekly show is going to get you the most consistent, you know, additional new viewers finding your show and giving it a try. I mean, when people go to look for a podcast and they search on subjects and all these different options come up, when they click in one to try it, they're going to look, when did they publish the most recent episode? That's the first thing they're going to look at. And if you dropped this limited series a month ago and there's no more people, think about that. Am I going to invest my time in this show if this is all I get? If these 10 or 12 episodes are all that I'm going to get? I don't know about you, but when I even go look at a new Netflix series, or maybe I'm going to even binge an older one, if there's only one season, I'm a lot less likely to invest my time in it. But if there's five or seven seasons, oh, there's a lot of content there for a while. I could dig into this for some time. That's great. Same type of thing happens with podcasters. So is a single event season worth it? I would say if you're a new podcaster and it's your very first podcast you're putting out, and you're going to put out a limited series as a season, as a one time drop, or even if you put it out one week for, let's say 12 weeks, that might be a better strategy initially for you. But if you're going to stop after that 12 weeks, it's going to have diminishing returns. You know, you're not going to get as much out of it because you're not building the ongoing loyalty that inevitably happens when you continue to publish on a regular basis with no anticipation of an end date in sight. Now, I think we all realize none of us are probably going to podcast forever, but for the foreseeable future, I think that's something podcast listeners think about as they decide what they're going to invest their time in in your show or not. But let's talk about seasons in general or using the season functionality of the podcast ecosystem to your advantage as an existing podcaster. So that's a little different kind of approach in considering the value of a season, is that let's say you have a large listenership and you've been podcasting for a couple of years, you've got, let's say, at least 100 episodes, you've published, and you're continuing to do a weekly episode. You know, generally if you're doing a weekly episode, you're going to do roughly 50 a year. Two years in, you're going to have 100 episodes. You may have a lot of content there, and you may have a need or a desire to publish a set of content in a certain niche area. Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a podcast that's in the pet space, like the domestic pet space, dogs, cats, fish, birds, whatever. And you've been doing this for a while, and you've got some good listenership. But you know what? You know, you've got a lot of dog fans within your audience, and they might appreciate having a set of episodes that's just focused on them. There's a good reason that you could create almost a spinoff, and they could be episodes that have already been published, just concentrating them in one really bingeable volume of 8, 10, or 12 episodes. That's all about the dog owners, the dog lovers, and putting that out and giving those kind of listeners, doing them the courtesy of putting out this content that's sort of focused on them. It's efficient for them to listen. They don't have to kind of hunt and go through all the episodes. You give them to them right there.

Same thing can happen in other subject matters in business subjects, you know, or entrepreneurship or sports. And you could have a general sports podcast. And maybe you're going to have some concentrated episodes on March Madness for basketball or something. Or, you know, you can see where this can go, where you've got lots of opportunities to use sort of the season functionality to either, within your one podcast listing, create.

A way to easily navigate through a set of episodes that's taking a deeper dive in one sort of facet of what you talk about or the way I would tend to do this is put out another whole show identity, another RSS feed, just for that limited content, because that gives you kind of a marketing advantage in all the listening apps. And this is going to be a little self serving about our platform on Poditized because we're one of the only ones that does this. But we give our podcast hosting subscribers multiple RSS feeds, you know, a minimum of five for one monthly subscription. So it doesn't cost you any more to put out another show identity. You just have to maybe create a variation on your cover art and your description, take a subset of episodes, publish that as a new show. And if your descriptions are kind of in alignment between the original show that everybody subscribed to and the new one going out there, well, when people search in their podcast app for, you know, topics, subjects that are going to bring up your main show, it also is going to bring up this spinoff show or this additional RSS feed in the search results. So as you have 1, 2, 3 or more of these, and we do have some customers are politized using multiple RSS feeds. Some of them might have, you know, an event they put on and they recorded a whole bunch of content at that event. And it's sort of a boot camp series, right, of content just that was recorded at that event. There are many ways you can use this, and it's kind of like a season when you think about it. But, you know, you can end up dominating the search results of certain topics and pushing other shows sort of off the search results. If you're going to get, you know, half a dozen shows show up on your screen when you search a certain topic. If two or three of those shows are yours, that's two or three competitors that aren't competing for the attention of whoever searched. So I'm very much in favor of, you know, doing things like this. I think it makes more sense if you put out multiple show listings. But certainly the season functionality, which I also should be fair and mention to all your listeners that not every app, not every listening app is really optimized for the kind of season designations that have been created by Apple. You know, of course, in the podcast industry, Apple tends to take the lead and create new functionalities. And there are some, you know, obviously Apple listening apps and Apple clone apps that tend to adopt that right away, but some of the others are slow at adopting it. And some of the listening apps just have not done it. So you cannot always expect that same type of season designation that you can set in your podcast host. Because I believe pretty much all the best podcast hosting platforms have the capability to designate episodes for particular seasons of a show within the one RSS feed. But not all the listening apps will display it that way. So you have to realize there may be some inconsistency from one listening app to another as to how your content is organized and displayed. But regardless, the idea of a season, I think if, again, sort of to recap, I think if you have the context of putting out a short season of content is you have a show that has a lot of published episodes, a lot of listenership that's already a lot of episodes, a catalog of episodes that's already out there. Then putting out seasons, designated seasons of content can be a good way to highlight or make it easy for your listeners to navigate through certain different subject matter, certain different recurring themes or topics that come up in your show, and a different level of experience and satisfaction to listen and binge through all that content. I think it can make a lot of sense. If you're doing it just as a one time show, you're putting it out there unless you're very well known, you're very famous, or something about your guests are all nationally known celebrities. A quick, you know, a short series, single short season of shows probably is not in your best interest or the way to put out that content. I would probably take a different approach doing that. Put out the show, publish them one at a time, have some consistency over a period of time of how many episodes you have, maybe one a week. Probably get more mileage out of it than just dropping it all at once and saying, here, hey world, here it is. It's kind of, you know, the build it and they will come sort of approach may not work very well in this situation. And I think it is something that's a little unique about podcast listeners. They tend to appreciate people that are going to show up for them. And keep in mind as a podcaster, you don't. It's not like radio where you have to show up every Wednesday at 9am or like, you know, at a particular time because you have a slot. It's not like that at all. Binge, record half a dozen episodes, schedule them out, but in the eyes or if you will, the ears of the listener, you're showing up for them on a regular weekly basis. You're releasing your episodes on the same day of the week, every week, usually about the same time of Day, that kind of experience and behavior for them, it's pretty powerful. Even though you're not having to do this every week, they believe you're showing up for them every week. Every Wednesday morning on their phone is an alert, hey, there's a new episode of my favorite podcast. Oh, great, I get to listen to that today. You know, they get to expect it. You don't build that same kind of trust and loyalty by just dropping a season all at once and only doing it once. You haven't earned that right. You know, you haven't earned it with the listener showing up for them week after week after week. And that's why oftentimes pretty. Actually, I don't think there are very few exceptions to new podcasts that we launch where let's say you're going to launch with half a dozen episodes or more. I mean, this applies to any quantity. But a lot of shows that say launch with half a dozen episodes, when we launch a new show, when it's new on all the apps, on that particular day, we backdate all those six or more episodes. So it looks like they've been publishing one a week for the previous six weeks. Even though no one ever saw it before. It just appeared on Apple. They're just finding it. When they find it on day one, they may think, whoa, where'd this come from? I didn't know about it. Oh, I've already missed six episodes. They have sort of fear of missing out. They're going to go listen through all of them. But it's really just day one and it sets the expectation with the listener. It you're going to be showing up for them week after week going forward. And that is, I think, some of the real value for us as podcasters in, you know, not only value we're providing the listener and serving them, but the value we get back from the listener. People invest more in a show that they believe has been consistent and is going to keep being consistent and constant in showing up. And very hard to do that when you drop a season or if you introduce it and you want to just do a short subject and drop it. Now, obviously that exception, if I am Oprah Winfrey, then I'm not. But if somebody like that nationally known celebrity going to drop a series with 10 episodes or eight episodes out there, okay, yeah, people are going to get it. It's going to get attention and people are going to listen and it provides them some value. Even if it's short term value, it probably gets a lot of play. But if she put out a weekly show, it would probably be off the charts, a heck of a lot more popular than Joe Rogan ever was. Now, obviously that's an extreme example and maybe not a useful one because of that, but you get the point. Why is someone going to invest their time in your show? And the fact that you're going to show up for them week after week is a big one. And that doesn't always happen with a season approach. All right, so for what it's worth, that's sort of my opinion on, you know, single short seasons. Are they worth it? I would say in most cases, no. But you know what? Undoubtedly there are some exceptions out there and that would make sense.

So for what it's worth, there you go. Hope you got some value out of this episode. Find that useful. Tracy and I will be back next time for another great episode. Thanks so much everybody for listening. We'll be back next time on feed. You'd brand.

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